Dr. Kang Chong's Group found a new mechanism that “conformation changes of protein mediated flowering”
Flowering is a most important event in the life cycle of higher plants and a symbol for the transition from vegetative to reproductive growth, which is regulated by lots of key regulating genes as well as the precise regulation of histone modification. As knows, sterols hormone (BRs) and gibberellic acid (GAs) are involved in this process, but how the conformation changes of protein mediate flowering is unclear. Dr. Kang Chong's Group and their cooperators found that BRASSINAZOLE-RESISTANT1 (BZR1) directly regulates FLD to mediate flowering and the conformation of BZR1 is altered by a cyclophilin (CYP20-2)due to its PPIase activity. Differences in activity and substrate preference of CYP20-2 from Arabidopsis and wheat led to altered flowering patterns. This new mechanism "conformation changes of protein mediated flowering” shed light on BZR1-mediated flowering and help elucidate the protein-level mechanism of CYP-mediated conformational changes in BZR1 to regulate its function.
This work has been published in The Plant Cell online (Zhang et al., 2013, doi: 10.1105/tpc.113.110296). This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31070677) and the Foundation for Innovative Research Groups of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31121065).